Hot Topics:

Opinion: Guest Opinions

Manfred Schwoch: History will judge the GOP

By Manfred Schwoch

Posted:
02/17/2018 07:20:20 PM MST

President Donald Trump walks from the Oval Office to the Marine One helicopter as he departs from the South Lawn of the White House for Mar-a-Lago on Friday. (Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images North America)

As the GOP leaders, Sen. Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan should be primarily responsible to remove their party's president from office, a man who not only is unfit for that office by every standard, especially of intellect and temperament, who presents a clear and present danger to this democracy, its values, security, reputation, environment, and its standing in the world. Their party's failure to act on this president's ignorance, volatility, and rejection and destruction of our institutions will be judged severely by history, and American leadership and standing in the world will be things of the past.

His America is one of fear and hate, without respect for any group but the military, the wealthy, the autocrats of this world, and for any race, and sex, but his own. He is inaccessible to facts, logic, science, and accepted standards of truth; he has replaced nearly every agency head with one totally dedicated to that agency's destruction, and decimated other agencies vital to dealing with other nations, such as the State Department, to the point that the experts vital to such dealings are disparaged, dismissed, or resign. The result is that our foreign policy has become dangerously aggressive, unpredictable, and inconsistent to both friend and foe, a logical result because of an unstable mind.

Advertisement

Are they willing to accept his behavior as the "new normal" for American presidents? Will their grandkids be asking, as Sen. James Inhofe's did: "Popi, why is it you don't understand global warming?" And will they, as Inhofe did, dismiss their question by saying the schools are brainwashing them, even as the evidence of deadly climate events mounts every day worldwide? Will they and their colleagues have to answer why they did not demand that he publish his tax returns as all his predecessors have done? Why they did not insist that he give open and fair press conferences, as his predecessors have done? Why they did not insist during the campaign that he not hurl personal insults at the other candidates and denigrate public officials like judges and FBI agents doing their public duty, while he himself is not giving the country a single day's work required of any and every president? There must be limits for laziness and incompetence even for presidents, and especially for presidents who, like this one, refuses to read his daily briefing, opting instead for verbal information from aides who lack the proper level of security clearance, and remaining uninformed of larger security implications, thus endangering national security. In his "Man of the House," Speaker Tip O'Neill wrote that Ronald Reagan never mastered any subject he needed to know as president. By comparison, with the poor performance and knowledge of this president the country has hit rock-bottom.

Sen. McConnell and Speaker Ryan must do their jobs and deliver us, the American people, from this fake president who is a danger to our democracy, our national security, and to the world. If they do not act soon, our president-emperor will have turned the U.S. into the kind of authoritarian regime he so identifies with, complete with a Soviet/Korean-style military parade showcasing our already obscene military might. But if indeed Donald the First insists on having his imperial parade, we should ask how many monuments to his vanity can our country afford as our bridges are crumbling, trains are crashing, and cities are flooding?

Boulder's Joey Airola wins in 106s at the Pepsi CenterThe nerves of steel for Boulder freshman Joey Airola didn't match the surroundings, let alone his circumstance. This state wrestling debut was a calm and collected masterpiece. Full Story

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story